Who needs the NBA when we've got 'Knights of Mayhem'?
Call me a naive little baby who'll believe just about anything if it involves medieval combat on TV, but I've got a feeling that somebody is going to die on National Geographic's new show, "Knights of Mayhem."
It is as inevitable as the decline of empire, with Americans increasingly more comfortable seeking mental refuge by looking backward in time rather than forward, into a bleak, debt-ridden future.
So a spear through the eye will penetrate the brain. A neck will snap after a fall from a charging horse. I don't want to see it. But I can't stop watching.
The show features men the size of offensive linemen bellowing like pro wrestlers. Add tattoos, a heavy-metal soundtrack, full plate armor, heavy-hooved horses, spears, high impact and fear.
Who needs the NBA?
"I've broken my body, I've lost my family, I've gone completely broke," said "Knights of Mayhem" chieftain Charlie Andrews. "This is not a game to me. This is my whole life. … Let the bodies hit the ground."
He probably wanted to say, "Let the bodies hit the floor," but it's not a floor, it's an arena.
I admit that "Knights of Mayhem" is a reality show trying to become a professional jousting league. But this one doesn't involve dancing or ridiculing politically safe targets like women of Southern Mediterranean extraction with big hair and fake eyelashes.
"Two-thousand-pound horses, two to three hundred pounds of man, 150 pounds of armor, this is a medieval train wreck," Andrews said.
There is no way to fake what happened on the opening episode. They use light spears that break. If they used heavy, hardwood spears, as true knights did in days of yore, then there would be a death every week, or horses maimed. And even with the lighter spears, it's dangerous.
"Pretty much everyone who's died in jousting has done so because something has gotten into their eye," said rookie "knight" Jason Armstrong.
The last jousting death I could find happened in England in 2007, when a fellow named Paul Anthony Allen, 54, of Chishill Road, Heyden, Cambridgeshire, was killed during the filming of a battle re-enactment.
Actually, I don't know what all that Chishill, Heyden, Cambridgeshire, stuff really means, but it sure sounds British, and, wait a minute, they practically invented knights.
Besides, as any Englishman in America will tell you — including many fine soccer coaches and fans — Americans will believe anyone with an English accent, even socialists.
Unfortunately, the troupe on "Knights of Mayhem" sound nothing like Geoffrey Rush, Clive Owen or the late Sir Alec Guinness.
Instead they sound more like guys from the Oklahoma Panhandle who like drinking whiskey and fighting on Saturday nights.
Back in England, the dead fellow had taken some precautions. He wore armor. But that dang spear broke and a sharp slice eased through the eyehole and then, well, if it were a professional league, it would have been just the moment for a commercial timeout.
So it is dangerous. And full-contact jousting isn't exactly that staged Renaissance fair stuff, which is fine entertainment but about as realistic as the fighting in "West Side Story."
When our boys were younger, we'd make the yearly trip to the Bristol Renaissance Faire near Kenosha. I vaguely remember desperately searching for shade, while eating peach ice, watching Elizabethan characters and heavy-metal warriors from some Ralph Bakshi cartoon all but challenge one another to a fight to the death. But they didn't pull their swords, so we walked.
Full-contact jousting began as staged bouts, but then true enthusiasts got involved. Included among these were members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, which has some 90,000 participants worldwide, devoted to the study of the period from the years 600 to 1600 AD.
Members of the SCA conduct mock battles, meet to drink vast quantities of mead and eat roast meats, and have split the world into various realms. But they don't have formal jousts and they don't have a reality TV show.
The Midwest is really their Middle Kingdom, whether you like it or not. And I found out Wednesday that we are ruled by a 10th century Danish noblewoman who controls Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, parts of Michigan and Kentucky.
Her name is Queen Runa (actually a Russell, Ohio, elementary school teacher named Linda Bouck.)
"We try to re-create everything from the Middle Ages except for religion and the plague," Queen Runa told me.
Queen Runa is a horsewoman and says that there are many SCA members involved with full-contact jousts, though the "Knights of Mayhem" are not formally part of SCA.
"They do their thing, we do ours, but there's a lot of talk about the show in the Middle Kingdom," said Queen Runa.
The guys on TV have their intrigues and feuds and dramas. Good Queen Runa, shouldn't the show be called "Jersey Knights"?
"You won't find a Snooki on horseback," said Queen Runa. "I've seen heavy-combat jousters work. The guys who are doing this, they're well- trained. It is very costly. There is the cost of the horse. The armor requirements are so much higher. These guys aren't playing."
Well, you're the queen. "Yes," she said. "I am the queen."
On the show, it wasn't about Miss Marple having tea with the vicar. Instead, big men aimed their lances. And the bodies hit the ground.
